Prime Minister Mark Carney has landed in Australia as he looks to bolster ties with a Commonwealth cousin that is increasingly viewed in Ottawa as a key ally on global challenges — a country that has some newfound importance for Canada amid a lot of uncertainty elsewhere.
Although Canada and Australia have always been close due to shared history, similar political institutions and a Five Eyes intelligence partnership, the bilateral relationship has not been a top priority for successive governments in both countries.
Carney is visiting Australia in his first year as prime minister while his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never went. In fact, there hasn’t been a Canadian prime ministerial visit in nearly 12 years and the last one coincided with a G20 summit. “We haven’t been as engaged the past few years,” a senior government official, speaking on background, told CBC News.
At a briefing with reporters ahead of the visit, another government official said Canada and Australia are “natural partners” but “there’s room for that relationship to grow."
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Diana Fox Carney disembark a government plane as they arrive in Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)Carney will deliver a keynote speech to Australia’s Parliament in Canberra during the three-day visit, which will also feature a flurry of business meetings in Sydney. All of it is designed to signal that Canada wants to breathe new life into the relationship, the official said.
Speaking to reporters in Sydney shortly after the Canadian delegation arrived Tuesday morning, Defence Minister David McGuinty acknowledged it's been too long since a Canadian leader was last here.
“It's never too late. Here we are. There's a new openness here in Australia to work with Canada,” McGuinty said.
“The prime minister's outreach and indicating that there is another way for middle powers to come together and collaborate on the economy, on defence, on security is a message that resonates very strongly,” he said.
When Carney spoke in Davos about working closely with other middle powers to check the dominance of “hegemons” like the U.S. and China, Australia is one of those countries he had in mind, officials said. As other relationships fracture, Canada is embracing allies it feels it can truly trust and rely on.
Australia is moving from the back burner to a more prominent position in Canada’s pecking order as the two sides look to strengthen their ties during this visit, notably by expanding defence cooperation and inking some sort of critical minerals development deal. Carney has already agreed to buy Australia's leading over-the-horizon radar system for Canada's Arctic, and more deals could be in the offing.
Not to mention Australia and Canada can also share notes on what it’s like to live near a global superpower that throws its economic weight around from time to time, another government official said.
Like Canada, Australia has been hit with Trump tariffs that have been disruptive and the president has been critical of the country's leaders, saying at one point he "doesn't like" the country's ambassador to Washington, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, during an awkward Oval Office exchange.
“Australia is extremely close to Canada in terms of our values but it's geographically so far away that a lot of times Canadians don't think about how important Australia can be for us as a partner,” said Vina Najibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
“I think this trip provides an opportunity to get a closer look of the state of the relationship now, but also the potential of the relationship moving forward,” she said.
Now that Carney has tasked himself with uniting countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) bloc and the European Union — the ultimate goal being a possible cross-continental trade agreement as a hedge against U.S. protectionism — Australia can act as a bridging nation alongside Canada to get something like that across the finish line.
A TPP-EU grand bargain will be up for discussion when Carney meets with government leaders here, including when he joins an Australian cabinet meeting in the country's capital.
This push to draw closer together is motivated in part by Carney’s personal affection for the country’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese.
The two leaders first connected at Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome last year and have developed what was described to CBC News as a genuine connection and friendship, which makes getting big things done together easier.
Carney personally drafted a social media post — a relatively rare occurrence for a prime minister — after meeting Albanese: "Great to meet Anthony Albanese. The only world leader who can discuss spirituality, the global economy, Vegemite hygiene and how Go-Jo was robbed at Eurovision in one go,” he said in an emoji-filled tweet that looks different than the ones crafted by his staff.
The two have stayed in close contact since then, meeting on the sidelines of various summits, and speaking by phone more than some other leaders, officials said.
James Skinner, the CEO of CANZUK International, a group that advocates for closer ties between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, said the timing of Carney’s visit is “absolutely perfect” given what he said about middle powers at Davos.
This visit is a sign he’s putting words into action, he said.
WATCH | What can Carney accomplish in Australia?:Prime Minister Mark Carney is on another whirlwind trade mission this week. This time he's headed to India, Australia and Japan, and as CBC News senior business correspondent Peter Armstrong explains, the potential on these trips is enormous.“What’s happened with the United States has opened up a lot of Canadian eyes — people are now starting to wake up — and we can’t rely on them as we have for so long. That relationship has deteriorated.
“We need to start venturing out and Australia couldn’t be a better country to do that with. We’re both English-speaking, middle powers with similar economies that share the same head of state,” he said, referencing King Charles.
While Skinner expects Carney to broker some business deals while in Australia, he also wants to see the development of closer people-to-people ties, including expanded mobility agreements that allow for the free flow of highly skilled workers between the two countries, similar to what Australia and the U.K. negotiated when they signed on to a post-Brexit free trade deal.
“Making it easier to move between the two countries — the free mobility of citizens — would be absolutely fantastic from both a social and economic perspective.”